Is it me or has DU moved on to the next shiny?

[nadinbrzezinski]

I will stop blaming the media now for not being able to chew grum and walk at the same time. I think that we, as a people, can't.

Sad cultural comment actually.

[JuniperLea]

1. There's no way to blame Obama for the EQ, the Tsunami, or the ensuing nuclear disaster...

The hate must be refreshed!!!

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Can I hate Mr. atom?

[JuniperLea]

22. I think you should...

I do!

[dennis4868]

20. but liberals blame....

Obama for congress weaknesses.....

[JuniperLea]

23. And his apparent inability to be an effective President of Egypt, Libya...

Japan, insert any country name here.

[Poll_Blind]

2. Until the U.S. can launch a cruise missile strike against Fukushima, it appears that way.

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

PB

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. I wonder is an idiot is actually considering that

Reference to nuke and GOM...

[Ian David]

5. What day comes after Thursday? n/t

[flamingdem]

6. Libya - effects us for a few months, Fukishima - effects us for centuries

No sense of perspective in a sound bite universe.

[Poll_Blind]

8. +1,000

No matter how long Libya goes on, Fukushima will still be going on by a factor of a hundred or, more likely, a thousand times longer.

PB

[RufusTFirefly]

14. That's the beauty of radiation

You can't see it or smell it. And its lethal effects can sometimes take decades to manifest themselves.
Therefore - QED - it doesn't exist.

And it certainly doesn't make for good TV!

What's more likely to hold your attention? Some invisible gamma rays? Or a nice juicy explosion?

[leveymg]

19. Get 'em while they're hot.

Nothing's colder and staler than yesterday's foreign news, but plutonium is forever (24,000 years, anyway).

[Sherman A1]

7. Well,

Life does kinda move on. Yes, the earthquake in Japan was tragic, as was the one in New Zealand, the one in Haiti, the tornado in Sunset Hills, Missouri, but there are other things going on in the world.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. But nuclear releases have not stopped

That is kind of the point that I made. We, as a culture, are incapable ofndealing with complex issues, this is one... Or keep attention on things for more than ten minutes.

We as a culture behave very much like children... That is the other point.

It is a culture, did not start yesterday. It has a long history, probably going back to at least the 1700s. I think it's just gotten worst. We are aproaching the crisis point in the Longe Durée of the US

[Sherman A1]

25. I disagree with your assessment

Perhaps the media cannot get past Charlie Sheen latest tantrum until his next one or the blonde girl is eaten by the shark, but the Libya situation changed dramatically with the UN Resolution and the introduction of a boatload of Tomahawk Missiles. I believe therefore it needs to be front & center (it had taken a back seat to the tragedy in Japan and there were those complaining about the lack of coverage). Yes, the nuclear situation continues to unfold, the impact on Japan continues to be among the top stories on the web pages I see (don't have much use for cable news) and I expect it will continue to do so.

News is a tough thing, sometimes you have to go after information on the topic foremost in your mind. We cannot count on what we jokingly refer to as a media to do so for us.

[AKDavy]

9. Collectively, we have the culture/politics/government we deserve

Because we have the culture, politics and government we tolerate.

The soft underbelly of democracy is that, because any fool can vote, many fools are elected. Simple mathematics dictates that half the population is of below-average intelligence. Mass culture and a common mythology easily manipulate the majority.

I'm afraid we've reached a point in our cultural evolution that is self-limiting: We possess the means to destroy most human life on the planet, possibly most life on the planet, combined with a dominant world view developed thousands of years ago by goat herders with one foot still in the stone age.

It may take awhile, but I fear the human condition is that we are betrayed and condemned by the human condition.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Sadly I agree

[Ozymanithrax]

11. I think this board reacts to the current news and most recent development...

just as the rest of society.

We are overwhelmed with information, and new crises pop up before the last crises is solved. When you add the ability of Technology to create new News Cycles every 2 hours, it tends to create a board that constantly chases the newest insanity.

Back when people read News Papers once a day, and caught their News once a day on radio and early Network News, and News tended to be local except for really big stories, things were different.

Information media is a form of entertainment not enlightenment. Sensational news like wars and dead naked blonds lead (if it bleeds it leads). Each new war or dead naked blond or Republican Outrage or Nuke plant disasters supplants old stories because we are overwhelmed by information.

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. Actually we are reaching the crisis of the long cycle of us history

This is just a symptom too.

[DCKit]

15. I love grum.

But we've been over, through and around all the arguments. Now we're just arguing with them for the sake of argument... and they're wasting our time (which I think was the whole point).

I know of no one who has come over from the dark side since I began posting in E&E a few years back. Their minds are set in granite and, if they can't get you with an actual argument, they waste your time with semantics or an offshoot.

What's the point? May as well just post the information and walk away, for all the good it's doing.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. To me it is worst than that

[The2ndWheel]

17. If it were just chewing gum and walking, it would be easy

We even go so far as to shine a brighter light on topics that we don't pay enough attention to. We can't keep up with ourselves. Even your cultural comment is taking time away from something else. You've highlighted yet another thing to worry about.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. Longe Durée, I think we are reaching the crisis point

Those cycles last anywhere from 300-500 years...and only a great crisis ends them.

[pscot]

21. The cyclical paradigm

has been replaced by the Slippery Slope.

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. Annale school, not popular among american historians

:-)

[damntexdem]

26. Of course not, we're focused on all the importan .................

ooh, shiny!